I've recently been sort of amazed at the precision with which the Buddha defined the path to cessation of suffering and enlightenment. The eightfold path is so basic that people don't talk about it much. But recently I noticed that when the precepts and the 8FP are really applied, life is different. Understanding is one thing, and application is truly meaningful and life-changing.

What has your experience been? Do the basics get left behind as you advance, or are they always at the core of what you do? Have you ever reflected on how beautiful and perfect the really simple teachings are?

You are approaching a subject close to my heart. My experience has been that the precepts and Noble Eightfold Path have always remained at the core of my pratice. What I have noticed is that I have found increasing depth of meaning and practice in the so-called 'basics'. The sublime beauty and depth is revealed the more one practices.

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

It's my belief that a person's practice may include various elaborations, but if the 4NT and 8FP are deeply embedded in the heart and mind, the simple beauty is never lost. Any buddhist path necessarily includes these most profound teachings and they lie at the heart of all cushion-practice and real life-practice.

That's right, never leave home without it! And don't venture in any mental directions without it too.

Traditionally understood as "diffuseness", papanca has probably best been defined by Venerable Nanananda as "conceptual proliferation". Papanca runs directly counter to Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. In Sanskrit, you may know it as prapanca.

Traditionally understood as "diffuseness", papanca has probably best been defined by Venerable Nanananda as "conceptual proliferation". Papanca runs directly counter to Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. In Sanskrit, you may know it as prapanca.

Metta,Retro.

heh, love that phrase. "conceptual proliferation".

Vision is MindMind is EmptyEmptiness is Clear LightClear Light is UnionUnion is Great Bliss

I've kept the 4N and 8FP at the center of everything. All the other practice and study over the years has acted as polishing stones - grinding away bits of my mental dullness to reveal more clearly the essentiality of the 4N and 8FB.

Vision is MindMind is EmptyEmptiness is Clear LightClear Light is UnionUnion is Great Bliss

there is a miltiary phrase which goes Keep it simple stupid or kiss for short (wonder if the band thought of this saying?) I have heard another similar one which goes Keep it simple sister, but not having sisters it doesn't really apply to me

the basice are always I think the most interesting thing to talk about.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill

Drolma wrote:Do the basics get left behind as you advance, or are they always at the core of what you do?

I don't consider the 4NT or N8fP to be basic. Rather I regard them as a summary, or like chapter headings in a book. Looking over the chapter headings you might get a rough sense of what the book is about. Then you read the book and get all the details of each chapter. Then, after, you can look at those chapter headings and be reminded of all those details.